The decision-making skills of leaders is often puzzling. And lately, more of these leaders find themselves in the news – and not for good reasons. Perhaps you’ve heard about the CEO who raised a drug price 4,000 percent – now he’s under arrest. Or the Virginia governor who is now pleading his case with the Supreme Court. Obviously, being a leader doesn’t automatically guarantee good decision making.
So how do leaders learn to make better decisions? In this article published by Fast Company, the author points out that good decision making is critical during all stages of your career. Most experts will tell you that good decisions are the result of three factors – knowledge, a gut feeling and careful consideration. Some people seem to have a knack for making good decisions. In this article, Fast Company interviewed some well-known CEOs to find out what their decision-making process entails.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Founders of Google. Setting a realistic timeframe to make major decisions is important for this company. Decisions aren’t stalled and business moves forward.
Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox. The first African-American woman to lead a company the size of Xerox takes into account the customer and innovation in her decision-making process. She asks, “what is the customer’s pain, and how can we use technology to solve the problem?”
Mark Parker, CEO of Nike. The research group at Nike is always looking at hundreds of new ideas. To make the right decision, Mark asks lots of questions so is team has to think thing through.
Dao Nguyen, Publisher of BuzzFeed. The company reaches 79 million people each month. To make decisions, Nguyen says she uses a combination of intuition, creativity and data – each of which are equally important.
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook. Zuckerberg seems to move incrementally. Long term strategy is discussed and then broken up into smaller scale projects. His team credits his inquisitiveness, persistence, devotion and ability to deploy resources.
Malala Yousafzai, Founder of the Malala Fund. Yousafzai understands that she can’t know everything, so she asks questions. She has become an adept listener.
Most jobs come down to two factors: making decisions and executing on decisions. Your ability to make good decisions is key to your success. And sound decision making is a skill that can and should be developed, just like any other skill. In fact, your ability to succeed is dependent on the development of your decision-making skills.
Leah M. Joppy & Associates can help. We have multiple workshops that focus on building decision-making skills for leaders, teams and all employees.